Russia doesn't use the "communist" label these days. The KGB has been been renamed. Otherwise a lot of things still seem to go on much the same. Get in the bad books of the State, and you are liable to get liquidated. Try going on strike and you're in real trouble.

And in many of the other former countries which made up the Soviet Union the situation is even worse.

The idea that the Cold War was really anything to do with ideology doesn't really stand up. It was about power.

Totalitarian governments can operate under any type of economic structure.